This is a good time to reflect upon the legacy given to us by our forefathers. They risked their wealth and their lives to gain independence from England and went on to construct the foundations of the great county the United States has become.

At the time, it was a noble experiment in combining widely disparate groups of people into one country. This experiment relied upon representative government in which the people retained a wide range of powers and freedoms, but gave up some to create needed common institutions.

That structure has endured with needed adjustments along the way. Majority rule with protection for minority rights, but always with the ideal that the individual mattered.

As a result, we have more freedoms than most anywhere else in the world.

We have had to periodically fight to protect those freedoms and we all owe those who made sacrifices on our behalf. Each one of us owes something to this legacy. Hopefully we all seek to leave things better than we found them in this great country of ours.